Video sitemaps?

By Dan Nolan

I think video site maps are currently one of the larger overlooked items in SEO. What does a video sitemap do?

It tells Google and Bing where your videos are

It attributes the video to YOUR website, even if it is on Vimeo or YouTube

It allows you to add text about the video, which then the search engines can use to understand what the video is about

That last point is the most important. “What is this video about?” Google can’t watch a video and index it, so we have to use text to describe it. This is when you want to resort to your keyword list and copy writing skills.

The video sitemap should be upload to Google webmaster tools, like any sitemap, and also referenced on your robots.txt file.

Here is an example of a video site map that I am working on for an experiment.

Edit 6/1/2011: Here is a better version of a Video SiteMap created with a WordPress plugin!